Opening:

In golden ages past lived the good wizard Dredmor
He was noble, proud; he discovered a tome of dark lore
In it he found the darkest secrets of un-life eternal
And deep within himself, a corrupt nature, infernal
So great heroes trapped him in crockery of eldritch decor

Legend fades into hearsay, hearsay fades into baseless conjecture, and baseless conjecture fades into limerick. Thus the peril of Dredmor was forgotten until someone using an especially ugly tea-set dropped the creamer and unleashed ancient evil anew.

Lord Dredmor threatens the world once more; once more the world needs someone with equal parts bravery and poor judgement. Once more, the world needs A HERO.

- - -

The lich Dredmor is building his power deep in the earth and must be defeated -- again! So our ignorant, foolish hero sets out to do this deed. Many heroes have tried before, none have returned, and frankly the latest wannabe hero doesn't inspire much confidence.

Structure:

Earlier mainquests are straightforward, have fewer solutions : handholding
Later mainquests are more convoluted, have multiple solutions

0,1,2    : Dungeon
0 : intro, infodump some hooks, include at least one "vicious carrot" monster
1 : The Carrot Gardens : some clever hero thought to use pesticide on The Carrot Gardens but was killed; you must complete the task to goad the Prime Carrot, "Carrotar, The Orange Beast who sews hatred and harvests vengeance" into combat -- he drops a Sigil of Dredmor (Collect X of these to do something bad to Dredmor; collect these like tri-force pieces. Possibly they fit together.)
2 : Dead adventurer has some kind of infodump scroll about the meaning/power of Dredmor's sigils; you use the one gained from the Prime Carrot to open the magic barrier to the Crypts. Dredmor notices this happen and taunts you somehow. (Appears and drops some text, laughs, and disappears in a puff of something unpleasant done to you -- summons a bunch of blobbies? Steals an item? Casts a painful spell?)
3,4,5    : Crypts : learn about the heroes who originally banished Dredmor, collect their objects to do something neat. And do something about those damned Zombys.
3:
4:
5:
6,7      : Mines : learn about Dredmor building an army to take on the world; conflict with moles? Some huge reference to DF needed; "digging too deep".
6 :
7 :
8,9      : Frozen : More army-building, more from a magical standpoint
8 :
9 :
10,11    : Wood : Maybe Dark Magics and portals used to summon terrible beings that need to be closed.
10:
11:
12,13,14 : Lava Pits ; Demonic Union plot : sew seeds of chaos into Dredmor's plans
12:
13:
14:
15,16    : Marble Palace : Thrusties ; Tomb of the Wizard Dredmor : find and assemble the pieces of crockery needed to trap Dredmor (perhaps an imprisoned dwarf can re-build them for you?)
15:
16: 
- When going through magic barrier to Pandemonium, Dredmor is terrified of eldritch crockery set. You won' see him again until the end.
17,18	 : Pandemonium : Demon Army; acquire artifacts to weaken Dredmor to be banished
17:
18:
19       : Dredmor's Lair -- EVIL BOSS FIGHT! : 
- You must have the full reconstructed Tea-set in which to trap Dredmor ... forever
- Hopefully you handled the magical artifacts or whatever needed to weaken Dredmor

In Detail:

Level 1: Entrance to the Dungeon
(This, and the above opening text, is told through some sort of text display with possible Dredmor-cartoony style comic panels.)

 Basic fantasy plot: The player knows that Dredmor is an evil dude that needs killing and so sets off into the dungeon to get to it. No especially believes in [the player's character], but they figure, what the heck. In other words, the player is an unlikely hero. This should be expressed someone in the introduction or through starting equipment -- some kind of form-letter from the King in which the player's name is scrawled in. (Note: add item: King's letter; tells the player good luck in defeating the evil facing the land using very obvious generic language, like "You are a (warrior/magician/cheesemaker) of great renown, so I have selected you to ...")

Game start:
	- Letter from the King in inventory
	- Player starts by the entrance to the dungeon (unique tiles); the way out is rapidly barred by the people above; a depressing display of bones of dead heroes is scattered around the entrance; they all have letters from the king and some really shitty broken items
	- Standing out somehow should be a clue to the next goal (what will that be? um.)
	- The way forward should be somewhat linear at the start; Make sure the player makes it to the next infodump-location after some basic introductory dungeon navigation.